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Plasma Mish-Mash

A clump of swirling strands of plasma created a tangled mass when viewed in profile at the edge of the Sun (Mar. 1-2, 2016). We call this a solar prominence, but it does appear more like a twisting, confused clump of plasma. The sequence was imaged in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. Competing magnetic forces pulled the plasma this way and that over the 25 hours of the video. (Note: the hour-long eclipse of the Sun by the Earth was edited out.) Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA.